The invention relates to motorized door opening systems such as those that use an electrical motor that drives a gear system or some sort of linkage to open and close a garage door in a residence or another structure.
Motorized garage door opening systems are well-known and in wide use. Such systems often include an electric motor connected to a gear system, which is connected in turn to a chain, belt, or screw that is linked to the garage door. Driving the motor in one direction opens the door; driving it in the other direction closes the door.
Such systems are popular and convenient because they spare the user the physical effort of opening and closing the door, and when used with a remote control system, the user can open and close the door without leaving his or her vehicle. Some such systems are less than ideal, though, because the electrical motor necessarily produces a certain degree of noise and vibration, and these can be transmitted to the structure to which the motor is mounted. Vibration can also be transmitted to the unit's cover, and radiated from the cover into the surrounding environment. These noises can travel into the interior of the structure, which can disturb others inside the building. Efforts have been made to make the motors and their associated gears and linkages as quiet and smoothly operating as possible, but in many cases more could be done.
It would be desirable, therefore, to devise a system for isolating a drive motor in a door opening system from the structure to which the motor is mounted. Such a system should effectively isolate the motor to decrease the noise and vibration transmitted from the motor to the mounting structure. Such a system should also be simple and inexpensive to manufacture, install, and maintain, so as not to interfere unduly with the system's ease of installation and use. The invention provides such an isolation system—one that offers these and other advantages that will be appreciated more fully with reference to the following written description and the drawings that accompany it.